Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Pharma's Worst Fear Realized: After Seeing SiCKO Oprah Calls for Town Hall Meeting

"This movie is very different [than other movies made by Moore]" says Oprah. "I want a town hall discussion about it. I think you [Moore] opened the door, but we need to get America talking about it. Republicans talking about it, Democrats talking about it...people who suffered talking about it ."

She was speaking on her show today with Michael Moore about his film "SiCKO", which won critical acclaim in its Cannes debut.

Moore suggested that like fire departments, health care should not be run for profit.

"Health care should be guaranteed to every American, remove the profit from the system, and regulate the pharmaceutical companies."

While More was uttering those words, Oprah could be heard saying "yeah, yeah" and her audience applauded vigorously.

"This is what I think is really great," Oprah said. "What you say at the end of the film. Make this country more about 'we' than about 'me'. Thank you for making that point."

Enough said!

P.S. Michael, I'm still waiting for that private screening!

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous4:51 PM

    Hey John:
    Contacting Michael
    If you have something you want to tell Michael directly, contact him at:
    Mike@michaelmoore.com
    Michael gets thousands of emails and does his best to personally answer as many of them as possible. Occasionally his email box "overflows" and you may get an error when trying to contact him. Please be patient and try sending your message to Michael again at a later date.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous4:58 PM

    Do you know if Moore saying that all aspects of health care (e.g., research, pharma, insurance, clinical) should be not-for-profit, or just some parts of it?

    Also, I would think that guaranteeing health care to all Americans is a completely separate issue from regulation of pharma.

    I'm not an expert in global health care issues, but in countries that have universal health care, what are the commonalities with respect to profit, regulation, etc.?

    ReplyDelete
  3. I have actually been in touch with "his people" who have promised a screening, but so far have not delivered on that promise!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Occam,

    I think there's more effective regulation of the pharmaceutical industry in other countries. Certainly the industry makes profit in these countries, so Moore doesn't seem to be calling for a non-profit drug industry. He certainly called for a non-profit health insurance system, which would guarantee free medical care. In other countries drugs are paid for out of this government "nmon-profit" insurance system and they more closely regualte DRUG PRICES. So, I assume that's what Moore is calling for and what Oprah was saying "yeah" to, although she may not have thought it all out.

    ReplyDelete

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